When to Import or use Plug in like IMportacular

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Victoria Mitchell 2
Victoria Mitchell 2
Fifth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello!


We  are new to importacular and have thought about using it to import data from our OneCause auction event we are having. Has anyone used it? I was curious on personal experiences from it.  We are hesitant to let it update records but would love it to import gifts  for sure - if that's the case it'd be just as easy to batch upload gifts and match them to a donor, correct? We want to do this as easy as possible but we will have new donors and/or new donor information to add to the system. Just curious if anyone has used Importacular for this. I found some older threads on it in here.  Thank you!

 
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  • Daniel R. Snyder
    Daniel R. Snyder
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Victoria Mitchell‍, we have just started using Importacular for a similar purpose. We have a project that brings in a number of outside (ie. non-alumni and parents) donors, so we were having to add new records and record the gifts which need to be entered in batch and Importacular has been great for those new records and gifts. I will say, we have not quite mastered the updating of existing records piece with Importacular so we do those updates separately, but that is more of our time to learn about the tool and be comfortable with how it updates records, not a matter of its ability. 
  • Aldera Chisholm 2
    Aldera Chisholm 2
    Sixth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I use Importacular quite a bit.  We have many gifts that come in via a third party site (600 this week!) and that is just too many to hand enter. So, I do them in a gift import which 1. Updates phone/address/name information on existing constituents 2. Adds new ones if needed and 3. Creates a gift batch.  Works great, took a bit of time to get the import finessed but once you do, it's smooth sailing.


    Sometimes, if I have a lot of new constituents, I'll use it just without the gift batch portion. 


    I like it, especially when new records have to be created because you can set up templates so if you have a set of needed fields to get filled in like an attribute, you can make that happen. I much prefer using it to RE's internal import systems.


    I'm still learning it myself as I've only been using Importacular for less than 6 mo but happy to try to help! 



     

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